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Many guild members enjoy our Block of the Month activity where we make a particular block, bring it in to the next guild meeting, and enter a draw to win all of the blocks. To encourage the winners to complete a quilted project with these blocks, a lovely gift basket was offered as an incentive. At our September 2018 meeting we were delighted to see 6 finished projects from the 2017-2018 block of the month winners. Well done!  Betty Rehbein - November 2017 - Cross Cut  Mary deVries - January 2018 - Half Sawtooth Star  Barb deVries - February 2018 - Snowball  Emma Russell - April 2018 - Friendship Star  Liz Gray - May 2018 - Checker Block  Joanna Vlaming - June 2018 - Viewer's Choice The name drawn was Barb deVries who was the lucky winner of the gift bag! Congratulations Barb and to all of you who finished off your 2017-2018 BOM block quilts or quilt tops.  Funny how we say “Summer is over” and not “Autumn is here”. I do love summer but find it goes by so fast. I hope all our members enjoyed some relaxation, the weather, family, friends and even some traveling adventures. Although no doubt some of you have done lots of work on your projects over the summer, autumn is a great time to really getting back to work on mixing fabrics to produce real works of art. Welcome back everyone. The dedicated group of volunteers have put together a great program this year which I know you will enjoy. Work is underway for our quilt show this spring and the CQA Quilt Canada 2019 show will be just down the way in Ottawa in June. I look forward to seeing all of you at our first meeting on September 26th for all the news, program and activity updates, challenges and so much more.
P.S. Don’t forget to bring your summer projects for Show & Tell. See you soon! Donna Sheaves, President
  The challenges this year were:
Members voted for the winner of each challenge. And the winners are.... Recycled Denim Challenge, from left 1st Mary DeVries 2nd Emma Russell 3rd Patti Moore  Container Challenge, from left 1st Chris Gordon 2nd Julie Carroll 3rd Vickie MacNabb  President's Challenge, from left 1st Rennie Hickey 2nd Vickie MacNabb 3rd Mary DeVries  It's been a great guild year - have a wonderful summer, happy quilting (hopefully on projects that will be on display at our April 2019 quilt show), and we look forward to seeing you in September. Congratulations to our guild member Rennie Hickey whose beautiful little quilt was juried into the 2018 CQA/ACC National Juried Show in the Miniature category.  Rennie's Miniature This stunning quilt raised $1,250 for equipment purchases for the Arnprior & District Memorial Hospital at the Arnprior Regional Health Foundation’s recent annual "Knight in the Maritimes" dinner. Pam Ross, the delighted purchaser, is pictured at the dinner with her new quilt which was displayed on the stage throughout the evening.  Many guild members have contributed to this project from its design, fabric selection, making the individual blocks, assembling the top, quilting it on the long arm, and attaching the binding.  The completed quilt  Completed quilt top  Backing fabric and thread!  Almost done! Guild members were targeting completion of their mystery quilt tops for our May meeting and what a treat it was to see 17 beautiful tops of the All About Town row quilt. And at least one quilt was completed.  Quilters received 4 sets of instructions, each for one or 2 rows, with the final set revealing the overall layout, and instructions for sashing and the decorative pieced borders. Fabric choices were made by each quilter. The next step is to complete our quilts in time to display them at our quilt show in 2019. And that includes any quilt tops which were still works in progress in May! Here are some close up photos of the quilt tops.      A lot was jam packed into this meeting! It started with the presentation of the quilt that we made for the Arnprior Regional Health Foundation’s auction at the imminent annual "Knight in the Maritimes" dinner to raise money for equipment purchases for the Arnprior & District Memorial Hospital. Guild members Brigit Whitnall and Gwen Pennings are pictured with the quilt and the ARH Foundation's Christine Waite (right.)   We also saw the completed quilt that will be raffled off at our upcoming 2019 quilt show. Many of us worked on the whimsical town blocks at a Sew Day in November and another in January. The top was then completed by Mary DeVries and Rennie Hickey (who also designed it), and it was quilted by Shirley Cavanagh. It is stunning!  Many Threads Bind us Together ... Community This was the target date for completing the tops of the mystery quilts that we've been working on since the fall and what a treat it was to see 17 beautiful tops of the All About Town row quilt. And at least one quilt was completed.  For more photos of these awesome quilts see the Mystery Quilt Tops blog post. The library book and magazine sale was a huge hit. In addition to materials from our own library, there were a large number of books and magazines donated to us by local resident Joanne Mitchell from her late mother-in-law Isabel Johnston's extensive collections. Read more about Isabel, an accomplished quilter and founding member of the Ottawa Valley Quilt Guild in our May 2018 Newsletter.   ,The main activity of the evening was the second of our hands on learning activity nights where we learned hand sewing techniques for embellishing our quilts. As at the February meeting, 4 techniques were offered - wool applique, 3D pinwheels, hand stitches for embellishing crazy patch quilts, and hexagons, and we learned the 2 that we didn't learn previously, providing ample time to learn each new technique.     Our April meeting was highlighted by guest Jan Kittle's presentation on using rulers when quilting and we also got a sneak peek at her latest pieces which she made for the Common Thread Quilt Show in Ottawa over Mother's Day weekend. Jan is the owner of The Pickle Dish shop in Carleton Place and she says "it's wonderful to have a quilt shop under your bed"! She offered a lot of great advice about quilting with rulers.
Here's Jan's beautiful quilt ruler sampler that she had whipped together for her visit to our guild to highlight ruler work.  And she brought many lovely quilts to show us.     Click or tap on an image in the gallery to see it in full. A very well kept secret is the very talented Valerie Miller of nearby Renfrew, who combines distinctive fabrics with traditional artistry and contemporary style to create table. pillow, and wall covers, each individual and unique. She was our guest speaker at our March meeting and her trunk show highlighted her lovely and distinctive fabric creations.   Valerie's "Origin and Evolution" presentation highlighted how she evolves her designs from an initial idea to a final piece by making small incremental changes and never throwing anything away! She often starts out not knowing what the final design is going to look like and designs as she goes. Valerie was inspired by her very creative and resourceful grandmother and her great-grandmother's quilts. Valerie creates dramatic pieces by very often using a dark coloured background to pop the colours on top. She uses a very thin and somewhat stiff compressed batting, and a cotton backing and very minimal quilting of the layers - just enough to hold it together. The batting is sewn to the top and then turned to produce a refined, tailored finish. Guild members were delighted that Valerie offered her patterns, kits and batting for sale. For more information see Valerie's Quilted Covers web site.  
           On Tuesday March 6th 10 eager quilters arrived at Glad Tidings Pentecostal Church, where Johanne Vajda instructed us on how to construct a "Big Bag". This bag will be excellent to convey large quilts to "Show and Tell", or a large amount of stuff to a workshop or retreat. Pockets for either side of the bag were constructed prior to Tuesday. By the time most of us left our bags were virtually complete. That is MY kind of workshop. Johanne provided handles and bottoms for those of us that required them. The variety of fabrics, colours and textures was very wide. Hopefully members will be able to inspect them at our next Show and Tell. -- Chris Gordon        Click/tap an image in the gallery below to see it in full. |
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